User blog:Zandrae/Quandaries of the Wiki Kind
Wyrmrest Accord is a Roleplay server on World of Warcraft. We typically use our official realm forum for communication. This wiki has not really had an active sysop in a while. The administrator had been asking other users to take over and it does not look like anyone ever did. There has been some vandalism, some drama, and other such things here over the years and it is likely too exhausting for one lone person to deal with. Other players asked me recently why I had not taken over this wiki yet. I'll get to that later, for now I want to write about things that pertain to this place, to the community, etc. Communication on WRA Currently the WRA user base uses a number of different and flawed methods of getting information out to each other. A wiki as an option to help the community comes up from time to time, with some caveats also presented, and us having no ability to do things like edit the front page or delete/move pages does not help any. Realm Forums One way our playerbase currently communicates is via the realm forums, which is great for discussions, but getting information out there is not so easy. Currently we have info threads handled by players who act as maintainers for lists--let's call them Curators. They manually compile and update information. The lists, like guild lists, often have out of date information, as it isn't really all that plausible for a Curator to research every guild on a regular basis to see if they're still active. I have an idea on how to fix that with a wiki in a way that is not ridiculously tedious for administrators and only mildly bothersome for guild leaders. I'll explain this later. If a Curator quits the game, we are stuck with an unmaintained thread of dead guilds and that doesn't help players on our server find the group that's right for them so they can have meaningful RP and fun with the people that suit them best. Wiki can help with this. Aside from Curators maintaining ever-growing lists of increasingly inaccurate information, there have been cases where Curators have arguably decided to cherry-pick or remove information. A wiki where everyone can edit event calendars, guild information, channel lists, etc. means that there's no one who can pick and choose who gets publicity and who doesn't. Social Media The second way we communicate with each other is through Social Media. There's a Facebook Group, which is moderated, actually there's three different Facebook groups, and there's also Tumblr. Facebook The problem with Facebook is that it's really hard to find information on a Facebook community page. The search function might work, but it might not. The layout doesn't really lend itself well to information like character profiles, guild information, or other such things. The plus side is the WRA FB groups have moderation, but it is still Facebook with Facebook issues. There are also privacy issues with Facebook. There is a player on WRA whose real life information was acquired via facebook by another player that's been engaging in some ongoing harassment. The result is false negative reviews left on review websites like Yelp mentioning her name and alleging things like promiscuity and animal abuse. Yes, there are players with that level of crazy on WRA. It's best we have someplace to share our information that isn't going to potentially put our meatspace livelihoods in danger. Tumblr Tumblr is another dashboard based social media site players use to post stories and art. Information here you'll only see if you happen to look at your dash at the right time to see the story/event post by the originator or a friend boosting their message, or if you go look on a page directly and use the search command. It's really not a good site for communication. Unfortunately it's also completely unmoderated so players can take dumps on other people's writing, accuse people of inflamitory things, and generaly be unruly without anyone reeling them in. A place to dump content that has a code of conduct and moderators to enforce it is necessary. WRA.org WyrmrestAccord.org is an external site designed specifically for a RP community. It's pretty great but, like this wiki, it's underutilized. There are problems on WRA.org with information freshness when it comes to guild/group/storyline/etc type of information lists. There's no way to filter by date and tell which information is new and fresh and which information is aged. This makes it very hard for players to use the site to make connections. I don't know who runs the site and would feel bad telling them they need to go into their lovely code and fix things. What I can do is help build up something that works -here-. Discord A player who is no longer on WRA set up a server discord and it's still active now with about 160 members as of this posting, with 30 on at odd hours of the night and 50+ during the day. Discord is great for voice chat, and text chat, but not for static information. We need a place for static information. Concerns about a Wiki Wiki use, site directories, or other such things have been brought up on the realm forums and there's generally two main concerns that come up. Server Canon There's the idea that a site would lead us down the dark path to a "server canon" where players dictate things that -everyone- on the server has to opt into and follow in order to participate. Our server tends to value individual rights, such as the right of each player to opt in or out of anything for any reason that includes characters existing, events occurring, etc. This right is vital for unmderated RP settings. No one is saying what is and isn't ok. There are no DMs. So players have to choose what they want their experience to be. So a Wiki could be a good space to put information, but it also needs to be stressed in a way somehow that just because something exists on the wiki doesn't mean that folks have to accept it or play along with it, especially if it makes them uncomfortable or offends their common sense. Power Problems There is the fear of the people in charge using their power to censor people they don't like and utilize the dreaded server canon to control players. This can be addressed by having more than one administrator or sysop, having an administrator code of conduct (like: If you don't particularly like a certain user, let someone else deal with them) and checks and balances. Freshness Beyond the concerns of abuse, the biggest concern for the wiki is freshness. This wiki is very old, it's got a lot of old data from players and characters that aren't around anymore. There might need to be some sort of sorting or classifying information as legacy. But that can come later after discussion. For now I've tagged old articles I've gone in and edited to remove malicious category classifications on with the last year they were updated so I can find the 'old' pages later. One way to keep guilds fresh is to name the Guild category something that changes every quarter. So the new Category might be RP-PVE-3Q16 for July/Aug/Sept 2016 and then having guilds tag themselves with RP-PVE-4Q2016 for Oct/Nov/Dec. This way there might be some dead guilds in the guild category/ies but the most recent category will have more alive than dead guilds, which would enable people to find a place to call home with less hassle. So what's the story? There have been a number of suggestions for making directories, wikis, or lists in the past. They've not gone anywhere. The most recent suggestion came up on the realm forums. I participated in it and was asked on the WRA Discord why I hadn't adopted this wiki yet. A second person also concurred that they had some discomfort with the person wanting to make a wiki being very new and being unsure about trusting new names with something they could abuse. The Discord server discussed the Wiki so I encouraged folks to go to the site and use it. I also set up a Wiki channel in the WRA Discord (Direct Link to the WRA Discord Wiki Channel) and help people there with doing things. What's the plan? I have attempted to contact the last active SysOp via private message on Twitter. So far, I have not heard anything back. It is unclear if it will get anywhere but I have made my good faith effort. I'm going to attempt to request SysOP status and promote a number of users into administrative positions so we can bring the site back to life. I'm going to establish a code of conduct for administration to follow in terms of having admin delegate stuff related to players they're not comfortable with to other administrators to prevent bias/abuse and establish checks and balances and transparency. Adoption Criteria *Wiki Activity: The Wiki has had a burst of activity because of the forum thread and the Discord channel since then. As Wikia requests, if the wiki is active, then one should post a blog, discuss new leadership before making a request, and allow users at least a week to respond. this post, bruh. *Eligibility: I don't see why I wouldn't be eligible. I am to my knowledge. *Content Contributions: I've been putting my own work on the Wiki slowly. I also have been putting categories and such on new posts. I haven't done stuff on old posts because I don't want to reset the date counter before we know what we're going to do with things, if anything, to keep things fresh and the information up to date. I have also set up templates for family trees and spoilers and compiled and/or written very loose guides on my user page that tell how to implement those things so other users can use them too. *Am I building a community?: This is a tricky one because WRA is a community on a WOW server, and the Wiki is a place for that large existing community to communicate with each other. I currently lurk the WRA Discord wiki channel and help people get things started. I have posted information in Wiki related threads on the realm forums, which is likely why people brought the wiki up to me in the Discord server in the first place--I actually have experience running a RP community wiki (I hosted my own for a RP community I DMed for in the early 2000s). **I cannot keep the news section up to date because the pages are locked; it's one of the biggest reasons why we need someone to take over as SysOp. I have gone in and edited the "speedy deletion" template not be white text on white background, increasing readability and reducing eyesore and will likely do so with other templates as I notice them. Final Words Rest assured that I really don't have any intention to gain anything from taking this over. I'm very anti-server canon, very pro-consent, and have the wisdom to have other administrators deal with individuals that I'm not comfortable with. No one is going to eat a ban hammer because of unpopular opinions or personal bias. My main goal is to help people find likeminded players, events, learn about other characters they might want to meet, and help people be able to enjoy the game and keep our server lively. If you are an active editor, please leave a comment here. If you are someone else interesting in assisting as an administrator, also let me know here or chat with me on the Discord server. Thank you. -Z Category:Blog posts